While Kwena Maphaka never will, Joe Root and Jemimah Rodrigues are aware of a difficulty. The phrase “Have you done your homework?” sums it up.
It would have been expected of Root until he developed a beard on his chin—something that, at thirty-four, he still doesn’t quite have. For a very long time, Rodrigues—who is ten years Root’s junior—will be called to answer to it.
The disadvantages of looking younger than you are minor. The first is that you have to show that you are old enough to receive alcohol in a bar. Another is that when you enter a cricket stadium, a shrewd opponent will always ask you if you completed your homework. It’s implied that you’re a child who ought to be studying and not interacting with grownups.
That is not an issue for Maphaka, who has made a fantastic comeback to the IPL as a last-minute replacement for the injured Dilshan Madushanka in the Mumbai Indians’ lineup. He is fortunate to have a visage that deceives others into believing he is older than he actually is. He might be 32, 22 or 12. In addition, he will have completed his homework.
At seventeen years old, Maphaka is a senior in high school. Having to spend ten weeks away from home won’t aid in his attempts to graduate with honors. Thus, he brought his schoolbooks with him to Mumbai. How could that function?
According to Eugene Stolk, the academic head and deputy headmaster of St. Stithians College in Johannesburg, Maphaka’s school, “it’s not unusual for us to have students competing in different spaces and needing to go overseas,” Cricbuzz reported. We use some of our older Covid protocols to manage our kids online, and we’ve had great success with them. In the virtual classroom, the lads can communicate with all of their teachers.”
For example, in March of last year, Ben Wallis, a St. Stithians child and the captain of South Africa’s under-17 football team at the time, maintained his academic standards in this way while on trial with Fulham, a London-based English Premier League team.
“Kwena’s got four hours of maths lined up in the next week or so with his maths teacher here,” Stolk stated. “We will oversee some of his obligations to the Independent Examinations Board [IEB] to ensure he completes the tests he can take from a distance and submits them electronically. We’ll set up second tests of comparable significance and stature when he returns so he can accomplish what he would have accomplished if he hadn’t left.”
Not to mention that he had done it previously, Stolk was sure Maphaka would handle it. From January 19 to February 11, or on 24 of the 64 days (more than a third) that made up the first term of the year, the men’s under-19 World Cup was held in South Africa. The day following the final, Maphaka, who took 21 wickets at 9.71 and won player of the tournament, returned to school.
“He knew what he had missed and he made plans to talk to people to catch up,” Stolk stated. It wasn’t difficult for the folks he was eager to work with because he is such an eager learner. Kwena simply moves forward. With that kind of mindset, I believe he’s an excellent athlete because he’s constantly considering the next move. He certainly has a lot of natural talent, but I believe he’s a bright young man who carefully considers how to get the most value for his money. In the classroom, he follows the same routine.”
It helps that the seniors will only have tests on nine other days, and that Maphaka’s school will be closed for holidays on 37 of the 66 days that comprise the IPL. Without the competition, Maphaka would not have been in the classroom for more than half of it.
Additionally, Stolk was thinking ahead: “This [the IPL] is going to open so many doors for him.” All we’re doing is controlling expectations on our end. Thus, even if he could have had a particular goal in mind, we now need to consider what constitutes a respectable degree of success for him.”
On Wednesday, Maphaka had to control his own expectations. At 17 years and 354 days, he was the third-youngest player in the IPL when he took the field in Hyderabad as Mumbai’s youngest foreign debutant. He also left with the most costly figures in the franchise’s history.
The two IPL performances that were worse than Maphaka’s 0/66 were Basil Thampi’s 0/70 for the Sunrisers against the Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2018 and Yash Dayal’s 0/69 for the Gujarat Titans against the Kolkata Knight Riders the previous year. He went for 22, 20, and 17 in his next three overs after restricting the damage to seven runs in his opening over. Not because Maphaka was an especially bad bowler. It was believed SRH intentionally batted with explosives.
The fact that none of Mumbai’s bowlers was spared in SRH’s 277/3 total—the highest in both IPL and franchise tournament history—was an extenuating circumstance. Sort of a comfort, however, that Heinrich Klaasen, who in the first forty-five balls of this year’s IPL had smashed eleven sixes but no fours, was at last kept to a measly boundary when he hammered the second delivery of Maphaka’s final over down the ground.
But Wednesday, for a young man who grew older with every race that was added to his record, would have been a sobering event. After 17 overs, or one for every year of his life, Maphaka finished, and by then, the perspiration had disappeared from a face that could have belonged to a someone decades older. And hopefully, more astute. We’ll find out if he has completed his bowling homework the next time he stands holding the ball at the top of his run.
